From The Heart: Record numbers join the NHS Organ Donation Register

Published: Tue 19 Feb 2013

From The Heart: Record numbers join the NHS Organ Donation Register

ITV's awareness raising campaign for organ donation, From The Heart, drove a record number of responses to the NHS Organ Donor Register online on February 13th, with 48,000 people applying to join the register in one day.

ITV’s special week of activity on-air and online, included two hours of peak time programming devoted to raising awareness of, and examining the issues around organ donation. On February 13th, a Tonight special on organ donation at 8pm was followed by an entertainment show at 9pm, From The Heart.

On the day these programmes aired, NHS Blood and Transplant experienced a record breaking amount of people logging on to their site to join the Organ Donor Register - more donation pledges on a single day than ever before.

Throughout the week beginning February 11th, a range of ITV shows and news programmes explored and highlighted the shortage of donated organs, the implications and the reasons behind it, encouraging viewers to join the Organ Donor Register, and to talk to their loved ones about their wishes.

An ITV twitter campaign ran throughout the week, with a host of famous faces including Ashley Roberts, Alexandra Burke, Torvill and Dean and Keith Lemon posing for twitpics of themselves forming a heart shape with their hands, using the hashtag, #fromtheheart.

A dedicated webpage www.itv.com/fromtheheart housed a range of information on organ donation, as well as a 'join the register' button to make the process of signing up easy for viewers who wish to.

Throughout the week as a whole (February 11th - February 17th), a total of close to 147,000 people logged on to register their wish to be an organ donor.

"We are absolutely delighted with the huge response from members of the public to ITV’s From the Heart campaign. When ITV approached us about an organ donation campaign, we knew it was an opportunity we couldn’t refuse and we are so grateful to them for giving so much air-time to the need for more organ donors. Together we have been able to encourage people right across the UKto join the Organ Donor Register and to talk about organ donation with their families.

"We could not have foreseen the unprecedented numbers of people who responded to the call to join the Organ Donor Register. We want people in the UK to be proud to call themselves an organ donor and each and every person who picked up the phone or logged on to join up this week should feel uplifted. This campaign has been about explaining why it’s so important to say yes to organ donation – quite simply more lives would be saved as more people would get the organs they desperately need. So to each and every person who is now on the Register and crucially, has told their family, thank you."

Ends.

Notes to editors:

From The Heart is the most recent corporate responsibility campaign from ITV, where the combined influence of our programmes, online platforms and celebrity talent, have been used to highlight causes and make a difference.

ITV’s campaigns have included both fundraising, as with Soccer Aid and Text Santa, and campaigns that inspire our viewers not to donate, but to take to action and support causes or campaigns at a local level to make a difference.

Collectively our campaigns in 2012 resulted in over £10.5 million being raised for various charities such as Unicef (Soccer Aid), Malaria No More (I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!) and many others locally, all thanks to the engagement and generosity of ITV viewers.

The highlight for ITV was Text Santa, raising over £5.2 million for 6 UK charities, including Age UK, Anthony Nolan, Carers UK, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Together for Short Lives and Whizz-Kidz. The chosen charities, whose work was highlighted on the ITV primetime show, reported impacts such as a 1000% increase in shop revenue and increased demand for online services in January 2013, compared to the same period last year.